A. Technical Field
This application relates to a system and method of using local network addresses for communicating between devices located at different networks.
B. Background of the Invention
In today's communication world, engineers have constantly encountered two problems: the first is the shortage of internet protocol (“IP”) addresses to designate all the network users and the second is associated with the widespread usage of network address translation (“NAT”) as well as firewalls at local area network (“LAN”) levels. The two problems cause substantial difficulties or increase costs for many applications which essentially require direct or peer-to-peer communications between users. For example, programmers have to devise specific tunneling methods to penetrate different types of NATs for IP applications. Such difficulties are expected to become significantly worsened after an increasing number of mobile users are connected on wireless networks and using of peer-to-peer IP applications such as online games, IP phones, file sharing programs, online collaboration applications, IPTV, instant messenger and other types of interactive applications.
Although IPv6 has been proposed and designed to alleviate the shortage of unique network addresses, the current infrastructure based on IPv4 is expected to coexist for a while. To exploit the capabilities of the current infrastructure and meet the growing demands, there is a need to provide a system and method to enable direct and peer-to-peer IP communication between devices or nodes which are operative behind network address port translation (“NAPT”) or basic NAT devices.